Psychological Therapeutic Solutions Ltd

18/08/2026

🍃 As schools across Elgin, Lossiemouth and the surrounding Moray area return this week, many teenagers will be feeling anxious about the transition back into school life.

New routines, busy classrooms, social pressures and sensory demands can feel overwhelming, particularly for young people who are neurodivergent or have previously struggled with anxiety, bullying or difficult experiences at school.

If your teenager is finding the return to school challenging, you do not have to navigate it alone.

Emma Jackson, our Assistant Psychologist, offers compassionate, trauma-informed psychological support for young people aged 14 and over. Emma works with teenagers to help them understand their emotions, develop practical coping strategies, manage anxiety and build confidence.

Support can include psychological stabilisation, psychoeducation and Walk & Talk sessions, tailored to each young person’s needs.

Emma offers face-to-face appointments across Elgin and the surrounding Moray area, as well as online sessions throughout the UK. She works under the clinical supervision of Dr Deborah Kingston, Clinical Psychologist.

💙 Sometimes, having the right support at the right time can make all the difference.

📩 Get in touch to find out more or arrange an initial conversation.

🌐 www.ptsolutionsltd.com

17/08/2026

Today, an amazing professional gave me this beautiful picture, and it made me cry. 🥹

“Thank you,” said the bee.

“What for?” said the other bee.

“On the days when I felt like giving up, you refused to give up on me.”

Sometimes we do not realise just how much it has meant to someone that we continued to believe in them. We simply kept showing up, holding hope and reminding them of everything we could still see, even when they could not see it for themselves.

But these words could so easily flow in both directions. It has been a privilege to witness this wonderful professional grow, persevere and find their way through the difficult days. I may have held hope alongside them, but the courage, determination and decision to keep going were always theirs.

To receive this on my final day in the clinic before moving to Scotland made it even more emotional.

This beautiful gift will be coming with me to my new clinic room. It will remind me of the people, relationships and shared journeys that have made my years in Lincoln so incredibly meaningful.

Some gifts reach far beyond the moment in which they are given. This is one I will treasure forever. 💙🐝

17/08/2026

Today, I took my name off the clinic door.

I also packed away all the little things that made the room feel like mine. The Eiffel Tower, the dolphins, the stones and all the other knickknacks my son has bought me over the years, from when I first stepped into private practice and began creating this space.

To anyone else, they may simply look like little ornaments. To me, they hold years of memories. They have quietly been part of the room as I built my practice, found my confidence and sat alongside so many people during some of the most difficult and important moments of their lives.

Of course, they are all coming to Scotland with me. They are part of my story and will help me make my new space feel like home.

The clinic room is now ready for our wonderful associates. It looks lovely, calm and welcoming, although I have to admit it feels a little strange seeing it without so much of my personality in it. A little more barren perhaps, but ready for the people who will now bring their own warmth, care and presence to it.

I am not disappearing completely. I will be back in Lincoln in six weeks and will continue returning periodically to complete my work with my remaining clients. The clinic is not ending either. It is simply changing, just as I am.

This feels like another quiet but significant step towards tomorrow’s move and the beginning of a new chapter. Not goodbye, just see you soon. 💙

15/08/2026

Sometimes it is important to stop and celebrate just how far we have come.

My client gave me this brilliantly personal card and a bottle of champagne to mark the outcome of our work together. Following a horrific trauma, and the consequential trauma that came afterwards, her body had continued to carry symptoms long after the original danger had passed.

I have deliberately included my light bar in the photograph because EMDR was a brilliant and important part of our overall therapy. Trauma is not held only in the story we can tell. It can remain in the nervous system, in physical sensations, protective responses and patterns that the body continues to repeat. EMDR helped us work with what her body was still holding, alongside the wider therapeutic relationship, compassion, trust and all the other work we did together.

The words written on this card were intended to describe me, but they apply equally, if not more, to her. She brought her most vulnerable self into the therapy room and trusted me with experiences that were frightening, painful and incredibly difficult to revisit. Whenever we reached a setback or the work became challenging, she drew upon her bravery and courage, engaged with the process and refused to give up.

There were moments of compassion, perseverance, determination and creative thinking, as well as a few “squashed potatoes in a pit” and “golden buzzer moments” along the way! The champagne was a beautiful gesture, but the real celebration is her courage, trust and relentless resilience.

This card made me laugh and cry in equal measure, and I will treasure it. It really is lovely to pause, look back together and notice just how far we have come. 💙

Shared with my client’s permission.

12/08/2026

We do not get taught enough about shock in trauma work.

We are taught about traumatic memories, triggers, avoidance, hyperarousal and negative beliefs. We learn protocols and techniques, but we are not always taught enough about what shock does to sensory processing, how survival responses become patterned in the body, or why a person can re-experience the past as though it is happening again.

When something overwhelming happens, the brain does not necessarily process the experience in its usual, organised way. The person may be unable to take in the full sequence of events, place them accurately in time, or connect the sensory, emotional and bodily information into a coherent autobiographical memory. This is why someone may remember a sound, an image, a smell, a physical sensation or a moment of absolute terror, yet struggle to explain what happened before or afterwards.

The thalamus has an essential role in this process, but it cannot be understood in isolation. It receives, filters and routes incoming sensory information, including towards the amygdala and other areas involved in rapid threat detection. This allows the nervous system to initiate an immediate sensorimotor survival response, preparing the body to fight, flee or freeze before the person has consciously understood what is happening.

The body acts first. Heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, posture, movement and attention can all change within moments. If escape or defence is impossible, the person may freeze, collapse, become numb or experience the event as unreal. These are not conscious choices. They are automatic survival responses.

The thalamus also communicates within interconnected circuits involving the cerebellum, cortex, amygdala and wider limbic system. The cerebellum does far more than coordinate balance and movement. It contributes to prediction, timing, sensory integration and the creation and automation of sensorimotor patterns.

When shock occurs, the nervous system does not simply record what happened. It creates a pattern for surviving what happened. The body may learn to brace, freeze, withdraw, scan for danger or prepare to fight or flee in response to particular sensory cues. The thalamus helps detect and route the incoming sensory information, while the cerebellum contributes to creating and activating the learned pattern of responding. Neither works alone. It is their interaction within the wider survival network that matters.

This is why past experiences can be re-experienced in the body as though they are happening again. A sound, facial expression, movement, smell, body position or internal sensation may activate the old sensorimotor pattern before conscious thought has recognised that the present situation is different. The person is not simply remembering the past. Their brain and body are predicting the return of danger and responding as though the past is happening now.

Shock can therefore obstruct conventional processing. It does not mean the brain has stopped processing altogether. It means that the usual integration of sensation, context, time and meaning has been overwhelmed. The experience may remain held in sensory, emotional and sensorimotor fragments rather than becoming fully integrated as a memory with a clear beginning, middle and end.

This is why asking someone simply to talk through what happened, think differently about it or provide a detailed narrative may not be enough. The person may genuinely not have the words because the experience was not encoded primarily in words. Their body may still be activating the movement it prepared to make, the defensive response it could not complete, or the freeze response that helped them survive.

In trauma therapy, we need to identify the moment of shock as well as the more obvious moments of fear, shame, pain and helplessness. The clinically important target may be the instant everything went quiet, distant, unreal or blank. Sometimes “I felt nothing” is not an absence of trauma. It is part of the trauma.

This is one reason EMDR can be so powerful. We are not relying solely upon a verbal account. We can work carefully with images, sensations, emotions, beliefs, movements and fragmented pieces of memory while attending to the body’s learned defensive patterns. Preparation, pacing and a clear case conceptualisation remain essential. We cannot force a shocked nervous system to process by asking it to try harder. We have to create the conditions in which the whole network can integrate the experience, update its predictions and recognise that the danger belongs to the past.

If we do not understand shock, we risk trying to treat an embodied survival pattern as though it is only a thought, a belief or a story.

Trauma is not only the story of what happened. It is also the pattern the brain and body created to survive it.

11/08/2026

Well, this was a lovely surprise to receive today. 💙

I have been nominated for the Womanifest Empowerment Advocate Award, which celebrates a woman who lifts others as she rises and who, through her words, actions or leadership, empowers women and girls to believe in themselves, recognise their worth and step confidently into their power.

I have absolutely no idea who nominated me, so I cannot acknowledge them personally, but knowing that someone thought of me for this particular award feels incredibly special. So much of my work is about helping women understand themselves with greater compassion, find their voices and realise that they do not have to make themselves smaller to be accepted.

Whether through my clinical work, teaching, supervision, writing or simply being honest about my own experiences, I hope I can continue helping other women feel seen, understood and a little less alone.

I am genuinely touched to have been nominated. 💙

You can find out more about the Womanifest Awards here:

Discover the incredible Womanifest 2025 line-up -featuring inspiring speakers, powerful performers, wellness guides, and game-changing coaches.

11/08/2026

This is such an important conversation between Davina McCall and Simon Squibb.

Not everyone experiences their mother as a consistent source of safety, care and emotional protection. For people raised by a mother who displays narcissistic traits, the relationship can be incredibly confusing because sometimes she may feel like the most loving, exciting and wonderful person in the world, and then suddenly say or do something that causes immense emotional pain. Children growing up with this unpredictability often learn to monitor the emotional atmosphere, minimise their own needs and remain alert because it can feel as though the rug might be pulled from beneath them at any moment.

As adults, they may be told that they are too sensitive, that they take things too personally or that they need to stop dwelling on the past. But that sensitivity did not appear from nowhere. It may have developed through years of inconsistent parenting and never knowing which version of their mother they were going to encounter. Sometimes it is really important just to talk these experiences through with somebody who understands, and to begin recognising that perhaps they were never the problem.

Children raised within these relationships can grow up feeling that they are simply not good enough. They may work incredibly hard, achieve more, give more and continually try to prove their worth to somebody who may never be able to provide the validation they have spent their life seeking. They are trying to prove their value to someone who cannot see the worth of the person standing directly in front of them.

Narcissistic parenting does not affect every child in the same way. Some children may be criticised or made responsible for everything that goes wrong, while others may receive more praise, protection or validation. Sometimes siblings are openly pitted against one another, as described in this conversation, but often it is far more subtle. Different versions of events may be shared with different children, comparisons may be made and family roles can gradually develop without anyone consciously recognising what is happening.

Over time, siblings who have grown up in the same family can be left with very different experiences and understandings of their childhood. They may become distant or estranged, with genuine hurt on both sides, each believing the other cannot or will not understand. One may become highly sensitive to rejection, while another may find it difficult to tolerate challenge, recognise their own vulnerabilities or reflect on how their words and judgements affect others. These patterns are not always intentional, but when they remain unrecognised they can be carried into adult relationships and passed from one generation to the next.

It is important not to casually diagnose someone with narcissistic personality disorder, but people do not need a formal diagnosis for their parent before they can recognise harmful patterns, acknowledge their impact or put boundaries in place to protect themselves.

For anyone who recognises something of themselves in this conversation, I want you to know that you are worthy. Those sensitivities may also have helped shape you into the compassionate, thoughtful and perceptive person you are today. Yes, sometimes there will still be dips and times when you struggle or question yourself, but you matter, your experiences matter and your needs matter. Never allow a mother’s inability to recognise your worth to convince you that it was never there.